Blue Jays chase Zebby Matthews early in 15-0 win over Twins

It was a night for records at Target Field on Saturday, just not the records the Twins wanted to set. This is what happens when you lose a game by 15 runs.

Will Wagner went 5-for-5 with a double, two RBIs and three runs scored to become the first Blue Jays rookie to record five hits in a game, and Toronto’s 15-0 victory tied the franchise record for a hit away in front of 30,517 fans. , many of them rooting on visitors.

The Twins weren’t left out of the records either. Kyle Farmer pitched the eighth and ninth innings to set the record for innings pitched by a position player. He gave up three earned runs on five hits and one walk.

It was that kind of night for the Twins, who have lost 9 of 12 and will begin the final month of the regular season 3½ games behind first-place Cleveland in the American League Central and 3½ games ahead of Boston for the AL’s third wild card. card slot.

“You never want to be in that situation, but there’s always kind of reliving the kid’s dream,” Farmer said. “It was fun.”

It wasn’t as much fun for Twins rookie Zebby Matthews, who was making his fourth major league start. The Blue Jays piled up a season-high 23 hits against five Twins pitchers, 10 of them off Matthews, who eventually hit big-league trouble.

Matthews (1-2) began the season at Class A Cedar Rapids and quickly moved up to the big leagues. His first three starts were sharp, a combination of five earned runs on 13 hits, 13 strikeouts and two walks for a 3.00 earned run average. But he struggled to get anyone out on Saturday.

After striking out leadoff hitter George Springer, he struck out 11 batters in the first and six in the second. In all, the Blue Jays put up nine runs and nine hits on Matthews before getting the fifth.

He struck out five, walked none and saw his ERA balloon to 7.41 after just two innings of work.

“I tried to slow it down as best I could, but everything happens pretty fast,” Matthews said. “They took good swings at the ball. We weren’t really executing the pitches the way we were supposed to. Everything happened in a way.”

Matthews allowed two home runs to Daulton Varsho, Spencer Horwitz and Addison Barger, and Toronto starter Jose Berrios — who blew a seven-run lead in the first inning — limited the Twins to three hits in six innings , while the Blue Jays tied all three. -the series of games headed right into Sunday’s game.

“It’s obviously very frustrating,” Matthews said. “My job is to go out there and give the team the best chance to win, and I didn’t do that tonight. So it’s obviously very frustrating. Come back tomorrow, go back to work.”

Berrios (14-9), traded from Minnesota to Toronto at the 2021 trade deadline, allowed zero runs on three hits and one walk. He struck out five. He gave up a second-inning single to Edouard Julien, then held Minnesota hitless until Christian Vazquez’s single in the sixth.

Asked when he thought he should ask Farmer to pitch, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said, “In the first inning.”

“Farm got us, the way he threw the ball, we probably could have brought him in in the seventh and he would have been fine and he would have done well,” Baldelli said. “You really start to think about it in the first, second half.”

Michael Tonkin gave up two runs on three hits and a pair of walks in the third inning. Horwitz’s homer made it 11-0. Scott Blewett allowed a run on four hits and a walk over three innings and Caleb Thielbar pitched a scoreless seventh before Farmer came on to eat the final two innings.

He pitched 1⅔ innings in a loss to the Chicago Cubs in 2019.

“Javy Baez hit me with a left hand, which was fun,” Farmer said. “What was funny about it was that the Chicago Cubs were a veteran team and they were having fun with it. They (Blue Jays) are all young guys over there and they took it pretty seriously.”

In the eighth, Farmer gave up a run-scoring triple to Nathan Lukes that was initially ruled a home run, and he scored on a single by Leo Jiménez to make it 14–0. In the ninth, Wagner doubled in Addison Barger to make it 15-0.

“The plate looks a lot smaller from the mound than it does with the batter’s box, and it’s also a lonely spot on that mound,” Farmer said. “So when they had to review that home run — which clearly wasn’t a home run — I felt like I was alone on an island. But, you know, it was fun.”

Short

Manny Margot started in center field for the Twins, but left the game with right groin tightness after exiting the fifth inning. He was replaced by Austin Matthews.

“Manny’s got a strain in his groin, something he’s going to need an MRI for tomorrow morning and we’ll see how far we look,” Baldelli said. “He wasn’t moving very well.”